


The Princess Bride AU nobody asked for

by rubidium, titanium (rubidium)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Princess Bride Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-19 04:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29620575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubidium/pseuds/rubidium, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubidium/pseuds/titanium
Summary: In his defense, Louis never asked to be the most beautiful person in the world.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson





	The Princess Bride AU nobody asked for

The year that Louis Tomlinson was born, the most beautiful person in the world was a west-coast barista named Gwen. (This was before Starbucks, but after baristas.) Surfer by night, coffee goddess by morning, she held her jheri curls back with butterfly clips and sported a choker that she’d been wearing since 1990. The only thing that rivaled the exquisite hue of the crema on the shots she pulled was her flawlessly tanned skin, peeking out between the hem of her shirt and her cargo pants. 

Tony, the coffee shack owner, thought Gwen was a godsent. He’d been worried about recouping his startup cost. Sure, he’d cut costs by lurking around Berkeley and helping himself to the abandoned couches and armchairs at the end of term to furnish the shop, but between the cappuccino machine and the register, he’d invested a hefty chunk of change. Two months ago, he’d barely been scraping by - but then Gwen had come along, and everything changed. Her devotees came thronging in every morning - surfers still damp from their morning ride, busy suits checking their pagers, men, women, even the occasional child. They waited patiently, sometimes for hours on end, just to spend a glorious five seconds on the receiving end of her smile as she offered up their latte with a free-poured heart. Sometimes the queue stretched all the way down to the boardwalk. 

God only knew why she’d wanted to work in his miserable hovel of a shop, with its wooden packing pallet for a door, and the broken window, and the rats. Tony tried not to wonder about it too often. He suspected she might be in love with him. Some nights he imagined it, blood throbbing with dread and excitement as he lay beside his snoring girlfriend Tiffany. Gwen would come into work fresh from the waves, wetsuit gleaming - he saw her take his hand in her own trembling one, her exquisite dark eyes full of agonized love. He imagined how gently but firmly he would refuse her, his goatee and ample gut quivering with compassion as she wept. 

It was just a suspicion, of course. (He was sure he was right.) 

In the end, the reason she had found her way to Tony’s shop didn’t matter: only that she stayed, earning them both thousands of dollars in tips every morning and shining like an angel descending from heaven as she foamed milk.

Unfortunately for Tony, Tiffany agreed. 

Tony had expected a much more awkward scene when they first met. He’d seen Tiffany coming through the slats in the packing crate door, and waved Gwen over to the register. The suit he was serving immediately whipped out his wallet and stuffed a fistful of twenties into the tip jar, shooting Gwen a wink. “Don’t freak out,” Tony whispered. “But my girlfriend is about to come in. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about her. I hope this isn’t weird for you.”

Gwen grinned, hands in the pockets of her lowslung cargo pants. It was like a finger of sunlight poking through a cloudy sky, full of riotous joy. “Tiffany, right?”

Tony stared.

“We all went to the same high school.” Gwen shrugged. “I’m not surprised you don’t remember me. I was kind of a dork back then.”

Tiffany came in, and stopped dead. “You.”

“Me,” Gwen said, and leaned across the counter to shake Tiffany’s hand. “You’re Tiffany, right? We sat next to each other in Calculus. You snored.”

“You didn’t.” Tiffany shook her hand blindly, eyes never leaving Gwen’s face. “You really liked it. You wrote your notes out as cartoons, and gave me photocopies so I wouldn’t fail. I thought you went to Stanford for computer science?”

“I did.”

“You did. But you came back.”

“I came back.” Gwen dimpled, still not looking away. They were still shaking hands.

Tony never stood a chance.


End file.
